Eagles Of Death Metal – ‘Zipper Down’

Eagles Of Death Metal - 'Zipper Down'

Score

Queens Of The Stone Age frontman Josh Homme and Jesse Hughes return with more dirty rock 'n' roll

Eagles Of Death Metal are the men your mother warned you about. Vocalist Jesse Hughes is an ordained minister who dates former porn star Tuesday Cross and regularly espouses his fondness of drugs. Drummer Josh Homme is a sensual man mountain and tattooed rock god who fronts Queens Of The Stone Age. That the pair have stretched the sound of them making each other laugh in a studio out to four albums is an impressive feat. But it wouldn’t work if it didn’t entertain, and with ‘Zipper Up’, which follows 2008’s slickly styled ‘Heart On’, these rock ‘n’ roll deviants do exactly that. From the zingy guitar lines of opening track ‘Complexity’ to the erotically-charged dirt-blues cover of Duran Duran’s ‘Save A Prayer’, it’s fun and filthy in equal measure, with enough hooks to hang Kanye West’s entire autumn/winter 2015 wardrobe from.

Formed in the Californian boondocks of Palm Desert in the late 1990s, the two close friends have since moved to bustling Los Angeles together. The strutting ‘Silverlake’ deals with the city’s scenester hub, relentlessly ribbing the ‘don’t you know who I am?’ crowd over razorwire riffs. The pace drops to something far meaner and moodier for ‘Skin-Tight Boogie’, which features gum-snapping guest vocals from aforementioned adult actress, Tuesday Cross.

Elsewhere, ‘The Reverend’ references Hughes’ unlikely religious affiliation and layers Homme’s piledriving backbeat with glammy psychedelic spasms so the whole thing comes over like Tame Impala covering The Rolling Stones’ classic ‘Gimme Shelter’. Sexy, fierce and occasionally very, very silly, this is an album made to be played on jukeboxes in backwater biker bars the world over, loudly.